Sign up to add this to your collection
|
Sign up to add this to your favorites
|
|
42%
Overall Rating
|
|
Ranked #9,374
...out of 20,698 movies
|
Sign up to check in!
|
Miserable after the shooting death of his girlfriend, video game tester Charlie immerses himself in his work. When a new 3D game comes in the mail, he becomes caught up in its bizarre fantasy world -- literally. Trapped inside the game, Charlie's only way out is to win a brutal fight-to-the-death battle.
--TMDb
|
|
Review by Chad
Added: April 16, 2007
Movies based on video games or modern technology in general have a habit of being mediocre offerings at best: remember Brainscan, Stay Alive, or Fear Dot Com? Cinematic masterpieces they weren't, so when I heard about yet another movie based on virtual reality worlds that can kill the person playing the game, I wasn't expecting a whole lot; however, my morbid curiosity being what it is, I had to check it out. Surprisingly, it was actually a pretty decent movie.
Charlie Nash (Nate Richert) is a game tester who spends his days at work looking for bugs in the latest Tomb Raider clones, and then, when he goes home at night, he plays games until the wee hours of the morning. However, he has some semblance of an excuse for this behavior: he's extremely depressed over the shooting death of his girlfriend Kate (Danielle Fishel), and as a result, he'd prefer to just sit home and avoid contact with other people. Poor guy.
One day, he receives a package in the mail that contains a new virtual reality game which comes with some rather simple directions: "If you wish to play, put on the headset." Sony and Microsoft could take a lesson from that, but as Charlie soon discovers, it really is that simple. Once he has put on the headset, he finds himself in a video game world where he has to complete some sort of mission without dying. Helping him out along the way is a lady named Princess who, thanks to his memories, is an exact clone of his deceased girlfriend. Her help may not be enough though, as this game is quite challenging: there are three "levels", one of which is a Grand Theft Auto clone, another that seems to be inspired by Resident Evil, and a final one that takes place on an alien planet. As if all of that wasn't bad enough, there's a "main" villain who chases him around in each of the stages... and this villain (Patrick Kilpatrick) just so happens to be a clone of the man who killed Charlie's girlfriend in the real world.
Alright, so I should probably get this out of the way as soon as possible: yes, Game Box 1.0 borrows a page or two from Brainscan, Stay Alive, and even A Nightmare on Elm Street, so if you're not interested in the concepts found within those first two movies, you can safely quit reading this review right now as you won't enjoy this take on the subject. If, however, you're like me and thought that both of those movies had potential but ultimately fell flat for whatever reason, then you very well may want to look into this release. It's not a perfect film and it does have some flaws, but it's a hell of a lot better than both of the aforementioned movies.
What I enjoyed most about this was how it seemed like a true virtual reality setup for the most part. Yes, there are some flaws in the logic along the way, but it's a much more genuine portrayal of how this sort of thing would probably play out than the other similar releases have been. When Charlie enters the game world, you see him as a real person, but (almost) everyone and everything around him is digitized. Health packs, restore points, and extra lives are the order of the day, and the fast-paced action seems like something you'd find in any decent Playstation game.
The non-gaming storyline is also solid, and this is only helped by the fact that Nate Richert turned in a damned fine performance as the lovable loser of a leading man. By the midway point of the film, the audience is truly feeling for the man... and not because of the gaming situation, but because it's so obvious that he's heartbroken over his former love. This actually gelled nicely with the gaming aspect of the movie, and the end result was a release that had a surprising amount of substance to it.
Now, I mentioned some flaws, so it wouldn't be fair to overlook those. The first and most glaring error is the zombie "stage." When I saw that this was included, I was hoping for a Romero-inspired bloodbath of epic proportions. I didn't expect to receive that (the slew of direct-to-video zombie releases have taught me a valuable lesson about the walking dead), but what I did expect to find was a low-budget zombie movie within a movie. I didn't even get that: the "zombies" are actually shadowy blobs that jump around like chimpanzees on crack while performing martial arts moves. This was probably a budgetary concern as I noticed that the effects took a nosedive after the characters moved on past the first "stage", but c'mon: people are making halfway decent zombie movies for a few bucks these days, and we wound up with this?
There were also some aspects of the storyline that I didn't enjoy. I won't spoil them here for fear of spoilers, but there are moments that are unbelievably clichéd and unrealistic, and then there's that ending... well, again, I won't spoil it for you fine readers, but let's just say that there's a fine line between "happy ending" and "sappy ending."
With those few flaws aside, Game Box 1.0 is actually an entertaining film. If you've ever been late to work due to having stayed up all night playing the latest FPS or if you've ever had to buy a strategy guide to get past that ultra-hard boss, you'll love it... and even if you're not quite that involved with the gaming world, you'll still probably get a little something out of the story. 7/10.
|
|
#1:
bluemeanie
- added April 16, 2007 at 11:00pm
Saw this earlier tonight. Woof. It reminded me
of that old Edward Furlong film, "Brainscan",
though not as good. I thought this was
unacceptable. Did the atrocity of "Stay Alive"
not teach Hollywood anything? Eck. 2/10.
|
|
#2:
Crispy
- added May 27, 2007 at 10:14pm
Whoops. Sorry. Didn't even bother to check to see
if this had been reviewed before. Guess that'll
teach me for being lazy. :
|
|
#3:
Ashley
- added September 17, 2007 at 6:04pm
I slept during most of this movie. Not a big fan.
|
|
Rate Movie? 
